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Behaviorism - Essay Example

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Behaviorism drove from the work of John.B.Watson. His claim was that psychology was concerned with behavior rather that mind or consciousness. The foundation of behaviorism is based upon the notion that conditioning causes all behaviors to be acquired after being in constant contact with the environment…
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Download file to see previous pages All methodologies trace their roots in history. Although, there is no classification which has actually been agreed upon but beside the main three methodological, psychological and logical types, there other few which are titled, like theoretical, biological and radical. The conduct of methodological behaviorism claims that it should only concern itself with the behavior of organisms, not with mental states and environment surrounding them. The focus is on the source of behavior .The essential theme of John Watson (1878-1958) writings is methodological behaviorism. Reinforcement, learning histories, external physical stimuli and responses in human and animals are the claims of Psychological behaviorism. Most of the prominent psychologists, Pavlov (1849-1936), Edward Thorndike (1874-1949), as well as Watson, have worked on it but the most famous work is on schedules of reinforcement by B. F. Skinner's (1904-90).Logical Positivism (see Smith 1986), a philosophical movement, has given birth to Analytical behaviorism. It focuses on concepts, which refer to behavioral patterns which can or should be interpreted into behavioral terms. It explains how environment controls behaviors and predicts if the environment changes how behavior will change in relation to it. Gilbert Ryle (1900-76), and later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-51) is a good source of analytical behaviorism. An advocated brand of analytic behaviorism, by T. Place (1924-2000), restricted it to intentional states of mind, such as beliefs, which took place to constitute a type, although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). It says that behind every mental state there are behavioral tendencies and situations.
Since psychology is a natural science of behavior in organisms, psychologists in a different manner, observed animal behavior. As a result, theoretical concepts were defined. Developmental study was the idea, which appeared at a big scale, during the early research programs by the behaviorists. They believed that the routine action of excess activities plays a key role in the development of humans. Developmental studies attracted Watson. Early behaviorist texts, Dashiell, Weiss, Allport and Hamilton also worked on this idea. Internal drive states and motivational theories were emphasized by the behaviorists. The result was "No expression without impression; no response without stimulation" by Dashiell (1994) would conclude this contribution the best. The psychology of habit formation related to trial and error, conditioned stimulus and an extensive explanation of response was the prominent contributions. Behaviorists were highly attracted towards the idea of habit formation through conditioning. Allport (1994) concluded that transferring the right responses to new stimuli was the core of education. The significance of social behavior, social stimulus and reactions which stimulate the social objects relating to behavior was added to psychology. Since 1920's, language acquisition and language itself was always been linked to self-stimulation and response. Language responses were considered as substitute and symbolic stimuli independent of the sensory feature of the original stimulus. Quine (1960) captured a behaviorist approach to the study of language, which was widely ...Download file to see next pagesRead More
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